THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
ASPEN SECURITY FORUM 2016
A CANDID CONVERSATION WITH THE DIRECTOR OF THE CIA
Aspen Meadows Campus
Greenwald Pavilion
Aspen, Colorado
Friday, July 29, 2016
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LIST OF PARTICIPANTS
THOMAS KENNEDY
Chairman, CEO, Raytheon
JOHN BRENNAN
Director, Central Intelligence Agency
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON
Counterterrorism Correspondent, NPR
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A CANDID CONVERSATION WITH THE
DIRECTOR OF THE CIA
(5:00 p.m.)
MR. KENNEDY: Could you please take your seats?
We're going to start in a second. Again, can you please
take your seats? We're going to start in a second. Good
afternoon, I'm Tom Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of the
Raytheon Company. And before we start, I'd like to thank
Walter, Clark and the Aspen Institute for a tremendous
security forum. Can you give them a round of applause,
please?
(Applause)
MR. KENNEDY: Now it's my honor to introduce our
last session of the day, "A candid conversation with the
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John
Brennan." This is Director Brennan's debut appearance in
Aspen and a rare interview in which he'll survey the
global security scene and tell us how he sees it. He
certainly brings the most unique perspective with his role
in managing the CIA's intelligence, collection, analysis,
covert action, counter-intelligence and relationships with
foreign intelligence services. And he has been a part of
nearly every significant national security decision of the
Obama White House, with him serving as assistant to the
President for the homeland security and counterterrorism
during the first administration prior to heading up the
CIA in the second administration.
Director Brennan began his service in government
at the CIA spending 25 years in both all source analysis
and clandestine operations. So when he returned to lead
the CIA in 2013, he became the first CIA careerist to
serve as director, a proud moment for the agency.
Throughout his career, Director Brennan has honed a rare
combination of thoughtful, careful analysis with the
ability to make a decision with speed. He calls it like
he sees it, he's forthright with strong core principles.
He has also been at the forefront of change. Most
recently, at the CIA where he has triggered the most
sweeping organizational change in half a century.
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Given the subject of global security, we're
fortunate to have as moderator a top media expert, NPR
counterterrorism correspondent, Dina Temple-Raston, who
recently completed research on the intersection between
big data and intelligence. So without further ado, let me
turn it over to Dina and Mr. Brennan.
(Applause)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Podium got no either. So
thank you very much for coming, Director Brennan and since
this is as we've said your first appearance here at the
Aspen National Security Forum, I wonder if you were told
that there is a small hazing ritual here for people who
are in Greenwald Pavilion for the first time. Did Walter
and Clark tell you? Maybe not. So what the ritual is, is
you have to make news.
MR. BRENNAN:
Yeah, no.
(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And I'm going to give you
plenty to talk about so that you'll have an opportunity to
do that, so I'll do my part.
MR. BRENNAN: I feel like I'm losing my
innocence here in front of a large crowd, very
intimidating.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
I'll be gentle.
So --
(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So I wanted to talk to you
about ISIS and cyber in Russia and China and Iran and
Syria. So we should get through that pretty quickly.
MR. BRENNAN:
Okay.
(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Eric Schmitt of the New York
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-- yeah, look at your watch. So Eric Schmitt, the New
York Times just wrote an article a couple of days ago that
was talking about a trove of new intelligence that we
found in Manbij, did I say that right? And Brett McGurk
has said that it has offered new clues to foreign fighter
flows related to ISIS. Some people have compared it to
the Sinjar documents that were received quite some time
ago. Could you talk a little bit about this trove of
documents? Why they're important and how it might help
stem the foreign fighter flow to ISIS?
MR. BRENNAN: Well, whenever we or elite forces
are able to overrun terrorist compounds, we obviously want
to gather up a lot of information. I think the best
example of how successful that has been was at the
Abbottabad compound when the -- the troops that went in
there were able to take out, you know, bags upon bags of
information in terms of documents as well as other
materials whether they'd be computers or phones or
whatever else. And so, Manbij, which is in the northern
part of Syria where ISIL really had its roots dug in there
and it was used as a place where terrorists would be able
to go across the border, both into and out of Syria. It
was the place where a lot of the foreign fighters were
located and external operations, some of them were
generated there.
And so, these assaults by the forces, the local
forces there supported by the coalition and the U.S.
military has been able to gain a fair amount of ground in
that area in overrunning a number of those compounds. So
that's -- it's called SSE, the Sensitive Site
Exploitation. So materials are taken so that we can use
that as intelligence, so we can find out who they are,
what connections they have, where they come from, what
type of contacts they have with other sources or whether
be funding or weapons whatever else. So just like in a
Abbottabad, the take in Manbij has the potential to really
provide us new and additional insights that we can use to
destroy ISIL.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And are they dossiers of
foreign fighters, where they're from, how they're
connected or is that really --
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MR. BRENNAN: Could be all of the above. It
could be as I said, hard copy documents as well as phones
or computers or other types of things. And so, the
exploitation of that is very important. If it's text
documents, you can sort of see it and read it, whatever
sometimes, obviously a lot of translations because it's
not just Arabic, there are lot of other languages that are
spoken by a number of these individuals. But if it is
some type of media, computers or phones, sometimes it
takes a while to be able to exploit it because you need to
be able to get into it. You need to be able to decrypt it
if necessary, you need to be able to process it, translate
it. And so, what we're trying to do is to make sure we're
able to use that information in as timely a fashion as
possible.
And so, it's not just in the Manbij area, it's
in other areas of Syria and Iraq where coalition and
support of the local fighters on the ground have been able
to overrun these areas and we exploit it for intelligence
purposes.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay. So in the last
session, Brett McGurk was just talking about Mosul and
Raqqa and assaults that will happen there. And I want to
ask you what happens after that happens to ISIS. If Raqqa
is taken away from ISIS, if Mosul is taken away from ISIS,
is there a stabilization plan and does ISIS become in a
sense more of an intelligence problem than a military
problem because instead of being in one place that the
military can watch or surround, they scatter. Does it
become more of a problem for people in your agency?
MR. BRENNAN: Well, thinking about Raqqa and
Mosul, they are much larger than Manbij. And Manbij has
been a tough fight and it's street to street fighting in
Manbij city. And the area around Manbij city also is
infested with the ISIL terrorists. Raqqa, couple of
100,000 folks, Mosul, over a million, and I don't think
ISIL is just going to evacuate. Maybe they will, they may
try to find refuge somewhere else so they can use another
area to launch their attacks. But I think it's going to
take some time, it's going to be tough fighting.
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And as you point out, one of the challenges
going to be is once it's assaulted and once it's
liberated, what type of security forces going to be able
to come in? What type of reconstruction effort is going
to be able to be undertaken? How we're going to ensure
that the people, the inhabitants there are going to be
able to return and live normal lives? And so, the amount
of destruction that has taken place in Syria, it is been
devastating and trying to repair that country as well as
Iraq. And so if there's going to be an assault on Raqqa
and Mosul, you're going to have unfortunately a lot more
damage, you're going to have a lot more casualties.
And then the rebuilding process, both from a
security standpoint as well as the construction work that
has to go on, the health needs of the people. And one of
the most devastating aspects of this conflict is that
we've lost an entire generation of individuals. Syrians
and Iraqis who have not been able to go to school, they've
been brought up in an environment of militarism, violence,
that's all they know. They don't have any skills that
they can use when hopefully peace is going to return to
those countries.
So this is a long problem, long-term problem in
terms of making sure that we're able to provide the
security that is necessary, working with the local forces.
But then having a plan as far as stabilization, security,
rebuilding, administration and then having governments in
the capitals that are going to truly represent the multi confessional, multisectarian nature of the people that are
there that has been the root of this problem.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And do you see it as being a
problem that suddenly they'll be spread out in more places
and more difficult or are they more difficult to track or
are they already like that, so it's sort of it's more they
have to be other -MR. BRENNAN: Right now they have geographically
disbursed themselves in both Iraq and in Syria. I think
they have large swaths of territory under their control.
And more and more of that is being liberated. I think
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we've made some great progress over the past year.
They're going to scatter not just in the theater there,
but outside. There are number of ISIL franchises that have
already been established in the Sinai in Egypt and Nigeria
are the areas we have their presence, in South Asia and
Southeast Asia.
This is more of a global menace than Al-Qaeda,
quite frankly ever was. Al-Qaeda at its height had, you
know, thousands of individuals and much more the number of
hardcore fighters. ISIL is not just a terrorist
organization in terms of perpetrating these terrific
attacks outside, it is a military organization. It has,
you know, established its, you know, its own government.
It has control over these very large areas and it also has
utilized the digital domain in ways far superior to AlQaeda.
This generation of terrorists within ISIL are
ones that have grown up in a technologically rich world.
And so they have made very sophisticated use of all the
different types of apps and communication systems, and
they have put together a structure and infrastructure in
Syria and Iraq that really is quite difficult to attack
and uncover. And so, the world can be their playground,
in many respects unfortunately. And they've been able to
find ways in Africa and Asia and Europe to be able to
exploit opportunities in those countries.
One of the reasons why a number of the ISIL
franchises have really been able to gain momentum quickly
is that they've been able to leverage existing
organizations. For example, in Nigeria with Boko Haram,
now it's Islamic State of West Africa. Inside of Egypt,
there was a group called Bayt al-Maqdis that was
responsible for a number of attacks in Sinai. They then
raised the ISIL flag and were able to bring down a Russian
airliner soon thereafter.
So ISIL has been this phenomenon and that has
gained such traction in such speed that has dwarfed AlQaeda's presence. Now that doesn't mean that Al-Qaeda is
not still a very serious institutive threat, they are.
They still have people, whether it'd be Afghan-Pak region,
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Syria, there is Al-Qaeda in Syria called Jabhat al-Nusra
as well as in Yemen. So we're seeing now a -- the
phenomenon of ISIL, the continued challenge of Al-Qaeda
that is really destroying not just people and places, but
also generations that are just on the verge of coming into
the modern day economy.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, since you bring up
ISIL and Al-Qaeda in sort of the same sentence, when ISIL
first started growing up, one of the things that we were
talking about in the terrorism analysis community was , was
there ever going to be a competition between Al-Qaeda and
ISIS? What was that competition going to look like? Was
one going to try and have a bigger attack than the other?
Were they going to end up cooperating together? How do
you see that playing out? Is there a competition? Are we
beginning to see the beginnings of it?
MR. BRENNAN: I think there has been competition
for last several years. I think as you know, ISIL used to
be Al-Qaeda in Iraq. And then it was, you know, Al-Qaeda
in the Levant and the Al-Qaeda elements within Iraq and
Syria had merged, and we have one organization. And then
there was a split within the organization which, led to
Jabhat al-Nusra Al-Qaeda in Syria and ISIL. And so there
is great competition between their leadership. There's
also competition between the rank and file.
Now in some areas, they will collaborate on the
battle fields. And we see in places not just in Syria
where there has been this tactical cooperation at times.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
For example, where?
MR. BRENNAN: Well, in areas where they both are
facing Syrian regime forces. It doesn't mean that they
work together in the battlefield. It may mean that ISIL
is on one side, Jabhat al-Nusra is on another side, and so
the efforts -MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
each other?
MR. BRENNAN:
And they're not shooting at
They're not shooting at each
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other, they're shooting at a common enemy.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Right.
MR. BRENNAN: But we also see in places like
Yemen where ISIL has a foothold and Al-Qaeda has several
thousand individuals there that have launched an
insurgency, there is cooperation among a number of
individuals there. So I don't see these organizations
merging. I do think that they're still going to be a
separation among them. But if there's going to be
leadership change, you will see that I think some of the
elements of both will find ways to come together to go
against the common enemy. And the common enemy can be
Shia, which is another distinguishing feature of ISIL.
Al-Qaeda really never had a great anti-Shia part
of its terrorist engine. It was always focused on the
west, United States and western influence. Al-Qaeda and
ISIL and Iraq really has been driven a lot by the
alienation that a lot of the Sunni community feel inside
of Iraq from a government in Baghdad that they believe is
Shia dominated, manipulated by Iran and has not taken into
account the needs of the very large number of Sunnis
within Iraq. So I think you're going to have these, you
know, fissures and competitions between the various groups
because either they have different agendas ideologically,
and ISIL is -- has carried out obviously much more
horrific attacks in some respects than Al-Qaeda. In fact
Al-Qaeda has condemned some of the attacks that ISIL has
carried out.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
MR. BRENNAN:
As they did it AQI?
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So if you were a fly on the
wall of Al-Qaeda's next board meeting, presumably before
the drone strike took place -(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: -- what do you think alZawahiri would be telling his management team right now?
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MR. BRENNAN: I would remind them that as Osama
Bin Laden said, this is a long game. Al-Qaeda is means
the foundation. It is the foundation upon which the rest
of this crusade -- I have to use that term for them, the
crusade is going to spring from. So we knew it's going to
be a long game. We've been at this now for 25 years or
so. But we need to make sure that we're not going to be
dwarfed and put in the background as ISIL has gained this
attention, attraction and has been able to generate a lot
of support within the Muslim community.
So I think that if I was al-Zawahiri, I would be
telling folks we need to stick with our game plan, but we
need to operationalize more of it. We need to be able to
move forward with getting some attention and fulfilling
the vision of Bin Laden in terms of striking against the
west, striking against those influences that are
corrupting the Muslim community. So I think he realizes
that he's not able to compete in so many respects on the
global stage with ISIL right now, but that he wants to
make sure that their strategic plan is going to be pursued
with the adherence that they have in a number of areas and
countries.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So what ISIL is renowned for
now is these small attacks that have ripple effects that - that make them, maybe not -- there isn't a big body
count, although there was in Paris, but rather it gives a
huge impression even if there are only a dozen people who
have died, whereas Al-Qaeda is known for its -- its big
attacks. Is Al-Qaeda still trying for that big attack?
MR. BRENNAN: The challenge for the
counterterrorism community, whether you talk about ISIL or
Al-Qaeda, we have to be prepared and deal with those
attacks that can take place very quickly with very little
planning as well as those plots that are intended to have
strategic impact and take multiple years and usually take
a lot of people. I think Al-Qaeda at this point is still,
you know, not given up on the larger attacks. But when we
look at Al-Qaeda inside of Syria, they are looking at how
they can in fact carryout an attack given the increased
security, for example, in Europe. We know that Al-Qaeda
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continues to have adherence and supporters and people in
Europe as well as in Africa and Asia.
So I wouldn't say, it's -- it's one or the
other. The challenge with ISIL really has been that
they've compressed the execution period of carrying out
attack significantly, like 9/11 attack took a long time,
it was very deliberate, the planning. ISIL has been able
to compress into weeks or months the ability to have an
idea or have a person who is positioned to do something
and to carry it out. As you said, you know, a number of
these are very limited in terms of who is involved, but if
you look at, you know, some of the attacks that’s -- they
can kill, you know, dozens upon dozens of people. And I
think they see that operational cadence being very
important that they don't want to have long lag times in
between attacks and they want attacks to take place in
different places, but to maintain their -- the notoriety
and the headlines.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, I think this is one of
the issues too that in trying to cover ISIS and its
attacks, it seems that in the old days, in Al-Qaeda days,
you used to have to actually go to a camp and train and
you used to have religious training with Al-Qaeda and
swear bay'at to Osama Bin Laden. But it seems that people
get credit for being an ISIS adherent just by having a
brief flirtation online with the group. And I wonder if
by calling something an ISIS attack so readily, which we
seem to do, whether or not we are giving ISIS more credit
than it deserves.
MR. BRENNAN: When you say calling something an
ISIS attack that we are prone to do, you're talking about
the media, right?
(Laughter)
(Applause)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
No.
(Laughter)
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MR. BRENNAN:
I --
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: I just wonder if you can say
that it's an opportunistic attack as opposed to an ISIS inspired attack.
MR. BRENNAN: Well, I think as you point out,
Al-Qaeda, there was almost a -- talk about hazing, there
was almost a rite of passage in order to belong to AlQaeda. You had to almost apply and you had to be vetted
and you were then part of the secret club. ISIL is much
different. You don't have to have that type of sort of
application process. It is they have trumpeted, you know,
who they are and they want to have adherence whether or
not you are with us in this theater or you're far away.
You can demonstrate your adherence and your allegiance to
what it is what we are trying to do by your actions alone.
And that's why they have made great use of the Internet in
terms of directing people, encouraging people, giving them
instruction about how these attacks can take place.
And so when something happens and we look and
see whether ISIL is going to claim credit for it,
sometimes I think ISIL doesn't know themselves, and I
think most times they don't. If somebody who has been
incited and encouraged by ISIL, they have no idea if that
was the real motivation. Even if somebody is found with
literature in their apartment that might reflect, you
know, sort of ISIL's, you know, narrative, that doesn't
mean that they carried out for that and may mean that
they, you know, woke up that day and wanted to commit
suicide and wanted to take others down with them.
But it is part of ISIL's strategy to have people
that they can deploy directly, that they can support
directly as well as to encourage and provide indirect
direction and incitement to individuals. So they will
claim credit for a lot of things and they feel as though
this is part of their brand as opposed to Al-Qaeda which I
haven't seen Al-Qaeda really try to embrace actions that
were taken that didn't have Al-Qaeda's foot -fingerprints operatives or somebody as part of it.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
And that was always Al-
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Qaeda's rules of the road, right, that attacks needed to
be certified by the center in some way.
MR. BRENNAN: Yeah. And as we saw, including
from some of the materials that were taken from the
Abbottabad compound, Bin Laden was very concerned about
the large number of Muslims that were dying in Al-Qaeda
attacks and felt as though the Al-Qaeda brand was really
tarnished as a result of that and were trying to have them
be much more surgical so they wouldn't go after Muslims,
they would go after, in their view, the non-believers.
ISIL as we see has killed in very, you know, demonstrable
ways Muslims of all different stripes and not just Shia,
Sunnis who they believe are, you know, apostates because
they have not joined the ISIL bandwagon.
So, you know, they have a very broad aperture in
terms of who is eligible to be killed as part of their
terrorist agenda. While I think Al-Qaeda is willing to
absorb collateral deaths, but the focus of it, I think, is
still that sort of Western influence that they believe has
pervaded their communities.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So let me shift gears just a
little bit. We've been talking a lot about Syria while
we've been here the last couple of days. As you see it,
what's the endgame there?
MR. BRENNAN: Boy, I hope there's an endgame in
Syria, I really do because of the destruction that has
taken place in that country and it is a remarkable and
beautiful country and it certainly was beautiful people
that has been now besot by this. I believe that there's
going to be no endgame even in sight as long as Bashar
Assad stays in Damascus because he is, in large part, the
reason why so many Syrians are fighting. And when I'm
talking about the Syrians, I'm talking about, you know,
good, bad and the ugly. Whether or not you're talking
about the Free Syrian Army, those that defected from the
Syrian government and the army to fight against the
dictator who was lobbying Scud missiles and chemical
shells on to these people, but also all of those who have
taken up the terrorist or extremist banner as well.
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So we need to be able to have some sense that
Assad is on the way out. There can be a transition
period, but it needs to be clear that he is not part of
Syria's future. Until that happens, until there is at
least the beginning or the acknowledgement of that
transition, you're going to have Syrians dying, continue
to die, because they -- many of them are trying to reclaim
that country for the good of Syria's future, but many of
them also want Syria to be the safe haven for terrorists.
So I don't know whether or not Syria can be put
back together again. Whether it's going to be some type
of confederal structure where the various confessional
groups are going to have the lead in governing their
portions of the country, we've looked at the different
parts of the country and which ones could be selfsustaining, which ones would rely so much on sort of
external assistance. Most of the people in Syria are in
that western spine of the country, the large portions of
the eastern part of the Syria are desert and limited urban
centers.
So I don't think also you're going to be able to
have some semblance of tranquility in Syria until you're
also able to address the Iraq issue. And that's why I
think this administration, President Obama, gets a lot of
credit for trying to look at what we need to do in both
countries so that they can -- what we're doing is going to
be complementary to this effort. But we're still a long
way from having, I think, the governments in both capitals
that are going to be viewed by the bulk of the population
as being representative of the peoples of both countries.
And Syria has a much greater mix of individuals
in terms of religions and backgrounds and ethnicities than
Iraq does, I mean Iraq still has quite a few but in that
western portion of Syria. Years ago they would live sideby-side, Christians and Shia and Sunni and even Jews that
were there. But there's been so much blood spilled, I
don't know whether or not we're going to be able to get
back to that in certainly my lifetime.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
want a solution there?
Do you think the Russians
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MR. BRENNAN: The Russians, yes, I think they
want a solution on their terms. They want to preserve
their more than 50-year investment in Syria. They have a
legitimate concern about terrorism emanating from that
area. There are several thousand Russian citizens that
have found their way into Syria and Iraq, you know,
foreign fighters, probably another 5,000 or so from the
former Soviet Republics that are down there.
So terrorism is a concern and they see what is
happening. At the same time, they want to keep Bashar
Assad regime in power. And we've worked with the Russians
and we're continuing to try to work with the Russians to
convince them that there needs to be a political path into
the future for Syria because this is not going to be
resolved in the battlefield. You know, several hundred
thousand individuals have died as a result of this
conflict and if Assad stays there, I think we're going to
see more carnage. There needs to be some way out.
So I think the Russians need to come to terms
with the fact that Assad has to go, not -- we don't want
him to go overnight. The last thing the U.S. government
wants is for the government in Damascus to implode. We
don't want a collapse of the government. We want to
maintain the institutions of governance because they are
the ones who are going to have to pick up the pieces. But
Assad has lost all legitimacy, all right to leading the
Syrian people. And as soon as he starts heading toward
the exit ramp, I think we're going to make progress so
that we can use the guns that are fighting with each other
now, like the Free Syrian Army against the Syrian
military, use those guns and that energy against the
terrorists so we can purge that area. But that's why I
think what we're trying to do is work the military front
or the security front as well as the political front. And
I wish the Russians would pay more attention to the
political front.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So there's been a debate
that's basically been going on for the past couple of days
here in Aspen over whether Putin is a tactical thinker or
a strategic thinker.
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MR. BRENNAN:
He's a misguided thinker.
(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
That's not a choice.
(Laughter)
MR. BRENNAN: I know. Okay, then he is in the
tactical side of the thinking arena.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So help us understand Putin
a little better, because I would think that if he was a
strategic thinker you could try to anticipate what he was
going to do. But if he's a tactical thicker, doesn't that
make it harder for you to try, you in the intelligence
community, to try to anticipate what he'll do next?
MR. BRENNAN: Right. And what we try to do in
the intelligence community, whether it's a Putin or
somebody else, we identify what are the factors, what are
the drivers behind his actions, what are the
considerations in terms of what he's trying to achieve.
So you look at Ukraine. It was an emotional reaction
there. He was very concerned that Ukraine was drifting
westward, it was going to join the EU and NATO, whatever,
and he was going to stop it at whatever cost, so he was
able to go into Crimea and basically annex it and then
take control through the separatists of eastern part of
Ukraine.
Now sanctions are still in place against Russia.
It continues to face serious economic problems, we're no
closer to having a solution inside of Ukraine and so where
does he go from here? Well, he's hoping that over time
that the west and Europe and the United States are going
to get tired with the sanctions regime. No. Now in
Syria, he moved into Syria in September of last year with
major military force to stop the collapse of the Assad
regime and the Assad regime was really on its back heels
and the opposition was doing much better. So he's in
there now and he's trying to buck up and he has improved
the position of the regime forces on the battlefield. But
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where is he going from here? What is he going to do as
far as the political steps that are going to try to
address the longer term and strategic challenges that -that he and we face so that he can preserve his interests?
Syria is the most complicated issue I've ever
had to deal with in my national security career, bar none,
because there are so many internal, external actors, so
many factors, a lot of our objectives are in direct
tension with one another. But I see Putin playing
checkers here when this really is a five dimensional chess
game, and you really need to be very careful and deliver
it in terms of how you move your pieces because it will
affect your position and one of these other strada. And I
don't see Putin doing that. I think he's used brute
force, whether you talk about Ukraine, you're talking
about Syria. And he's hoping that the chips are going to
fall in the right place. Now, I think he's been able to
achieve a fair amount of tactical progress, but as far as
the longer term effort, my money's still on the United
States.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And the longer term effort,
how would you explain what that is?
MR. BRENNAN: How we're going to bring some type
of law and order and security to Syria and Iraq, as well
as the broader Middle East so that those countries and
those people along with Russia and the United States and
the rest the world are able to operate in that area to
common advantage as opposed to feeding the forces of
extremism and terrorism and militarism. And again, I
think that based on his background, KGB background, I
think he is somebody who always wants to use force an d not
use maybe a more strategic and thoughtful approach on
this. And so I have interacted with my Russian
counterparts, I was up in Moscow a couple of months ago
trying to again convince them that we, the United States
are really serious about trying to bring this conflict to
a close, but it has to be one that is not just going to be
a near-term solution and keep the embers burning because
that’s just going to lead to even greater problems in the
future.
18
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And did you feel you made
much progress in convincing yourself]?
MR. BRENNEN:
No.
(Laughter)
MR. BRENNAN: Some -- I think we were making
some progress. Unfortunately, I think when the Russians
saw that we've been in a cessation of hostilities believe
it or not in Syria for the past several months, if
anything but in lot of the areas. The regime forces
including the Russians, the Iranians, Syrians and
Hezbollah continue to strangle Aleppo and to cut it off
from the outside world.
And I think when the Russians saw that they
could make progress on the battlefield during the period
of cessation they wanted to continue to push the advantage
on the battlefield while still discussing the political
aspects of this with us. And I think I have not been
convinced that the Russians are serious about following
through on some of the commitments they made, whether it
be in the cessation of hostilities or some of these other
understandings that we are trying to reach that is going
to bring the level of violence down.
I think they stalk a good game, but I have not
seen them follow through with a genuine interest in what
is good for that country as opposed to what is good for
them.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay. Staying on Russia, I
mean, it's clear that Russia has tried to influence
elections in the past, just as in Germany in France. If
this DNC hack proves to be Russia, is that a game changer
for you? How would be -- how would intelligence be -play a role in responding to that?
MR. BRENNEN: Well, let me first say that and
with all the press reports that are out there about the
hacking and exposes gone on in the various networks,
anytime there is hacking like that and release of
proprietary information, it is a crime. And so, the
19
legitimate organization, the right organization in the
U.S. government to investigate such a crime is law
enforcement and the FBI, working with the other entities.
And so that is undergoing the investigation and
who is responsible for whatever happened there I think is
to be determined. I know a lot of people are jumping to
conclusions there. But I do think that we need to take
stock of who is responsible for this. And as I think the
government as well as others have been saying for the past
number of years, the capabilities of foreign actors,
whether they be nation states, sub-national actors,
companies that are working on behalf of governments are
able to carry out these cyber activities that can disable,
that can destroy, that can manipulate our systems and our
networks.
And so therefore, as we're moving more and more
into this Internet of Things where we’re all going to be
interconnected, the vulnerabilities that exist are
significant and this is the domain where most human
activity takes place right now. And so as a country, as a
government, as a people, we need to be mindful of the
havoc that could be wrought not just in terms of taking
down electric grid, but in terms of the potential to
manipulate the foundation of our democracy, which is an
election.
So we really need to make sure that we as a
people agree and reach a consensus on what the
government's role along with the private sector should be
to safeguard that environment that holds our security and
our prosperity within it. And if we’re not able to reach
that consensus, I think we’re going to be facing these
serious challenges and threats. And that’s why as there
was this great debate between a certain law enforcement
national agency and a certain private sector organization
about encryption that is just symptomatic of the issue
that we have to grapple with. What is the right of the
government? If we're a country of laws and if rule of law
prevails, what should the government be able to do and be
able to access in order to protect the welfare of its
citizenry?
20
It's not as though CIA and NSA and FBI officers
are out there wanting to get into somebody's e-mail
account and read it. We want to be able to ensure the
protection of civil liberties and privacy rights, while at
the same time safeguarding the system that everybody's
lives are attached to. And just like over the years when
we were able to determine what's the role of law
enforcement on this, our streets what's the role of the
government to keep our airports and our aircrafts safe,
and in the maritime arena, same way is the digital domain
which is the new frontier.
But there is -- the sense of it’s you know, the
government is trying to intrude upon us. No, the
government -- who is the government? This attitude of
sort of we -- understand, I'm a guy from New Jersey. You
know, I love this country and I love the work that I do.
I've the best job in the world. And I'm trying to make
sure that my children, my grandchildren are going to be
able to use this digital environment for their future
security and prosperity.
And unfortunately, I think there has been a real
misrepresentation and mischaracterization of what the
government is trying to do. And I've heard some senior
technologists and others say, when the government says
there shouldn’t be encryption, that’s the last thing the
government says. The government wants strong encryption.
At the same time, the government wants to be able to carry
out its fundamental responsibility of protecting for the
welfare of its people.
And until we actually have this very honest
discussion and where the government and the private sector
are able to work together because there's not a government
solution, that digital domain is owned and operated 90% by
the private sector. This is going to be groundbreaking in
terms of how the government and the private sector need to
work together in order to ensure the common good.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So do you think the
conversation between the FBI and Apple over encryption was
a healthy conversation to start?
21
MR. BRENNEN: It started but I must say there
was the polarization there in terms of people were -again misrepresented what Jim Connelly wanted to do.
Talking about, you want a back door, you want all of this,
no we want to deal with technologies now that can make
impenetrable systems that terrorists and others can't take
advantage of.
So when a -- if a judge issues a writ that says
a safety deposit box in a bank must be opened up because
there's something in there either inculpatory, exculpatory
of the crime or something that’s going to allow us to
prevent a crime, the bank owner has a legal obligation to
open it up. Same thing with a warehouse owner, or
somebody who owns an apartment building.
Now private sector companies are getting the
ability to say to the government and to the courts and to
our system of laws, no, I'm going to determine what the
government is going to be able to see or not. No -MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, we think they're going
to get that ability. We don't know yet, right because it
hasn’t really been tested?
MR. BRENNEN: And people say that well, if you
have a technology that is -- allows the government to do
that then everybody is going to exploit the vulnerability.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Right.
MR. BRENNEN: It’s a legitimate question and
issue that needs to be addressed. But let's do it without
the sort of reckless accusations about what the government
is trying to do, no. And people say, well, if the U.S.
companies are going to be limited in terms of what they
can do and has to make it available then, our foreign
competitors are going to seize that field.
Oh, come on, the U.S. basically is the
predominant country in this digital environment and right
now Russia and China are not rules of law. And so, this
is a country that firmly believes in the rule of law,
otherwise chaos is going to reign. And if we want chaos
22
to reign, okay let the cyber environment go and let the
terrorists and the extremists and the criminals and the
pedophiles and others have their way in that environment.
And I don't think that’s the world and the country that we
want to live in.
(Applause)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So I just want to turn to
one more thing, and then we’ll go to questions. And you
mentioned China, and we haven't talked very much about
China the last couple of days here at the security forum.
And it's been an adversary in two big areas; one on the
hacking issue and the other in the South China Sea. So
how is your agency working those two issues and can you
talk a little bit about how your new digital directorate
plays a role in that?
MR. BRENNEN: We established a digital
directorate because that digital environment affects our
profession just the way it affects everybody's lives. And
so how we operate around the world, we have the
responsibility -MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
digital directorate is?
Can you explain what the
MR. BRENNEN: The digital directorate is the
unit within the CIA that has responsibility not just for
protecting our systems and networks and databases, but
also being able to understand all the implications of that
digital environment. So we have to operate clandestinely
around the world. In order to do that clandestinely, you
don't want to have your identity of CIA revealed.
But now with all the biometrics that are out
there and the CCTVs that are out there as well as any time
you use your ATM or you use your credit card, you create
digital dust. And we all have forensic history that we
continue to accrue everyday that we’re operating in terms
of where we do something, what we do. So agency officers
when they come in to the agency as new employees, they
already have a digital history.
23
And sometimes we operate under different types
of cover legends.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Right.
MR. BRENNAN: We need to make sure that their
forensic history, their digital history matches their
cover legend as opposed to exposing them as a CIA officer,
in terms of where they worked, where they trained
whatever. That’s just one example of this digital
environment has fundamentally affected our ability to
carry out our work.
And so, there's digital environment is -directorate is the one that has responsibility to be
thinking about what are the risks, what are the threats,
what are the challenges, but also what are the
opportunities. And I think for too long the intels
community was pushing off technology and saying, no we
need to stay clear of it. But by staying clear of it, the
absence of your presence in that digital environment is
very revealing. The absence of your activity means that
you are not like others who you turn to.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Right, so you are not
posting a lot of Facebook and tweeting and things?
MR. BRENNEN: Well, that’s a good point because
we don't want our officers out there, but the officers who
are not out there on Facebook or Twitter, they look
different than maybe their counterparts in other places.
So these are issues that we’re having to grapple with and
that’s why we wanted to have a place of really smart
people who're thinking about how we can continue to
fulfill our responsibilities in this digital environment.
Now with China, they have this rapacious
appetite on virtually everything in terms of commercial,
trade, business around the world as we well know. And
that digital environment is one that they readily exploit.
And we have called them on it a number of times in terms
of the types of things that they're doing to just rake up
and vacuum up things that they're going to advance their
economic interests, their commercial interests.
24
Now we all operate in that environment, but
there are some things that are considered to be sort of -you know off limits. And so we've had serious
conversations with them at the highest levels of
government. Whether or not now they're not doing it as
much, whether they're being more careful when they do it
because I think there was a bit of sloppiness on the part
of some of them and that’s why they were caught. But if
they're doing things against U.S. companies or in U.S.
soil here they're breaking a law and good on the FBI for
holding individuals who are participating in that
accountable.
One of the real challenges in the cyber realm is
that a lot of times these nation states or countries will
use a couple of cutouts so its two or three hops before
you get back to the intelligence agency whatever that is
doing and say aha. But it's attenuated so it's much more
difficult for attribution purposes.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Right.
MR. BRENNEN: South China Sea, I was out in
Singapore about six weeks ago or so, at the Shangri-La
Conference and met with all my ASEAN my Southeast Asian
counterparts; talking to them about the United States
although we have all these other issues we’re grappling
with, we still believe very strongly in our interest in
Asia and our relationships with our partners and our
allies out there.
And with the South China Sea issue, China and a
number of countries have disputed claims over these either
islands or out droppings in the sea. And China is
inherent to a lot of the sea treaty and there is a
mechanism for resolution of disputes. They refused to
acknowledge that, that’s the recent ruling that came out
in favor of the Philippines.
Now a big country like China and a lot of the
smaller countries in Southeast Asia, how fair is that in
terms of dispute resolution unless you have an independent
third party. And United States has come out very strongly
25
to say, there needs to be some mechanism that is going to
be fair, that is going to take the rights in claimants -of the claimants into consideration and put forth its
ruling. And it does have the force of international law.
And so, we continue to engage with our partners out there
and there's senior level discussions taking place between
the U.S. government and the Chinese government.
And hopefully these issues will be resolved
peacefully. But we are not ignoring, we’re not turning
away in any respect. China in fact as President Obama
said, we have an Asia pivot to make sure that our presence
in all of its dimensions; political, economic, military,
security is felt by the folks out there.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Let me take you back just
briefly to digital dust and in particular the hacking of
the OPM files and the 21 million pieces of information
that disappeared from OPM's files. Does that make it
harder to have someone who is in your agency do their work
enter China? Have you seen any sort of blow back from
that that their digital dust basically is now in the hands
of someone else?
MR. BRENNEN: Any type of pillaging of U.S. data
systems, federal government data systems is a problem for
government agencies, whether or not it's identifying
information about individuals or programs or the work that
we’re doing. And so, the OPM was a very good example of a
very large scale theft of data that was proprietary to the
U.S. government.
But a lot of the legacy practices and databases
that were put in place when computers first came on board
remain today. And trying to protect them and now change a
lot of your business practices overnight because of the
vulnerabilities and the ability of these countries and
others to ravage them, it takes time. The federal
government is a big, big organization, an enterprise and
so what we’re trying to do and the work that is being done
by the White House, Lisa Monaco is here, has the lead for
the White House on the cyber front, I think making a lot
of progress on trying to better protect our systems so
that we have confidence that they are not going to be
26
stolen and then used against us.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: So, you haven't seen any
indication that so far it's been used against people who
work for your agency who are trying to travel around?
MR. BRENNAN:
issues very closely.
We are tracking that and other
(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
more about that?
MR. BRENNAN:
Okay.
Did you want to say
Not to you.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Not to me, okay. Okay.
Just really quickly, I wanted to just ask a quick question
about Iran and then we'll go to questions. Given the
agreement that's occurred, do you see a change in the
conversation or tenor in the conversation, are you
experiencing any change as a result of the nuclear
agreement?
MR. BRENNAN: I think it was the right thing to
do in terms of preventing Iran from pursuing these nuclear
weapons program. It was a boost for President Rouhani who
we consider to be much more moderate than a lot of other
elements within the Iranian government. He needs to have
continued traction in order to gain more supports, there
is tension between hardliners and moderators within the
Iranian government. When we talk about Iran, frequently
people consider it a monolith, it's not a monolith, just
like the U.S. political system, there are differences
within the environment.
And so we are going to -- we are watching this
very carefully as they go to their presidential election
next year in terms of how this balance and this tension
that exists within the government. But Rouhani, I think
has demonstrated his interest in bringing Iran back into
the community nations. My concern is that I think a lot
of Iranians were thinking that there was going to be a
windfall in their personal lives as the monies was freed
27
up. This is going to take time. The money, the revenue
that's flowing into Iran is being used to support its
currency, to provide monies to the departments and
agencies, build up its infrastructure. And so, it's going
to be a while before the effects are felt more broadly
among the Iranian people. It will happen, but it is going
to take some time.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And are you and people in
your agency feeling any effects? Does it seem like the
relationship is more positive or is it too early to tell?
MR. BRENNAN:
My relationship with the Iranians?
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Yes.
MR. BRENNAN: I don't have a relationship with
Iranians. So it hasn't been affected one way.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
It hasn't, yeah.
(Laughter)
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Do you feel a difference in
the tenor of the relationship or not particularly?
MR. BRENNAN: In the tenor of relationship,
there is still a lot of discussions going on between
United States government and Iranian government on a
number of outstanding issues to include how the
international financial system is going to be able to now
react to an Iran that is less encumbered by sanctions. So
there is a dialogue, there are frustrations certainly in
the Iranian side, but I do think that so far the adherence
has been good to the negotiated agreement. So, I do
believe that things are moving positively, slowly but
positively.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay, fair enough. So,
let's have some questions and if you could wait until the
microphone comes to you and say who you are and make sure
it's a question, that would be awesome. We will start
with Ken.
28
MR. DILANIAN: Thanks Dina. Director Brennan,
thanks for doing this. Ken Dilanian with NBC News. Can I
just press you a bit on the hacks because as we have been
sitting here, the news is broken that the Hillary Clinton
campaign was hacked and government officials are telling
us and other news organizations that there is really not
any doubt that Russian intelligence was behind this, that
the only question is whether they leaked it to WikiLeaks.
And understanding that you are not going to comment on
classified intelligence sitting here at this podium, can
you at least talk to the question of, if a foreign
adversary is found to be interfering in our electoral
system, isn't that a game changer, doesn't that go beyond
the typical espionage tit for tat?
MR. BRENNAN: Again these incidents are under
investigation, I am not going to comment on an ongoing
investigation irrespective of what some anonymous
officials out there might be saying in terms of who is
responsible for it. And when it's determined who is
responsible for this, then there will be discussions at
the highest levels of the government fed by the results of
that investigation and the intels and professionals about
what the right course of action should be. Obviously
interference in the U.S. election process is a very, very
serious matter and I think certainly this government will
treat it with great seriousness. That's all I can say at
this point.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Do you see –- regardless of
who did it, do you see this as a game changer?
MR. BRENNAN:
Game changer in terms of --?
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Something very different
that we haven't seen before that we need to take a look at
in a new way?
MR. BRENNAN: Well, if there is, there has been
some manipulation of the election process here and system,
this is going to be something that this government and our
country is going to have to look at again back to what I
was saying before, what the vulnerabilities are to the
system out there, the digital domain, that this election
29
and the next election and other things are going to be
prone to. So, I think there have been a series of game
changers over the last several years on the cyber front
and sometimes we haven't I think taken the right message
from it.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay. Other questions?
Gentleman in the back with the brown shirt.
SPEAKER: Thank you for your thoughts, Director
Brennan. I worked teaching English in Afghanistan in 1978
during the time of the Soviet Union invasion. So, I saw a
very peaceful country, started about 10 years, then it
took them to get to Soviets leave (phonetic). Sir, my -I would like to go back to this current events this week
here. I feel that you as Director of CIA, wouldn't it be
a good idea for you to select a state, I think our state
of Colorado would be a great state and say, let's go to
paper ballots, we have a 100 days or under -- I do, I
think that I think we have the right population, we have
the private financing and let's and you as director, don't
you think it's a good idea that you can't get involved
with the investigation, you get public about it, but we
need to respond to this and if we are going to have a
President Trump because of his buddy pool, I have been
busy with Ukraine for two and half years every day.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
there, so --
Well, let me just stop you
MR. BRENNAN: I am going to tell as a
professional, I am not a policymaker, I tee up the
intelligence to the policymakers in terms of what it is
that we are saying and facing and there are going to be a
lot of decisions that will need to be made in order to
address any continued vulnerabilities of these types of
systems and networks in order to mitigate that
vulnerability. They may decide to go to paper ballots in
certain places, you know, I think what we need to do is to
figure out how we are going to strengthen the security of
that digital environment in a way that gives us greater
confidence that it's not going to be exploited by those
who want to do us harm.
30
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay. Other questions?
This lady in the stripe shirt please.
MS. TORRES:
You talked about --
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Could you tell us who you
are?
MS. TORRES:
Oh Mary Torres from Chicago.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
Okay.
MS. TORRES: You talked something about in the
future stabilizing Iraq in Syria and how that was going to
be so difficult and I haven't heard Turkey mentioned.
Doesn't Turkey have to come into this equation because of
the decisions Turkey makes on its Kurdish population and
the coup with Erdogan, hasn't he been instrumental in not
seeing that that infiltration of the ISIS fighters goes
over the Turkey border and the Islamatisation of Turkey
that he deliberately practice?
MR. BRENNAN: You are absolutely right. So many
of these issues are interconnected and if you stop pulling
the thread on one issue, you quickly get to another
country and a related issue. You bring up the Kurdish
issue and the Kurds are over the area that Turkey, Syria,
Iraq, even into Iran and the tensions that exist between
some of the governments and the Kurdish people who have
been seeking their independence or autonomy for quite some
time has certainly been manifested in the Turkish
political environment. But the area is going to be
affected by the instability, whether be in Syria or Iraq
or Turkey for several years to come.
Now there is a fair amount of political
turbulence going on right now in Turkey as a result of the
attempted coup that is still playing itself out. It's
going to have reverberations, I think not just inside of
Turkey, but potentially outside of it as well as we see
this evolve in the coming weeks and months. But you're
right, we could go around the borders of these countries
and see how the situation in Syria is and Iraq is
affecting Jordan and Lebanon, Israel, even Egypt. So, it
31
does have this impact much more broadly than only in those
two countries.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Turkey was a big transition
or transportation hub for foreign fighters going into
ISIS. Turkey began to crack down on that. Do you have
concerns that now with the instability there that that
move towards cracking down is going to abated?
MR. BRENNAN: Yes, I do because President
Erdogan has said that they are still addressing the issue
of the coup plotters and understandably they are going to
be focused on trying to protect the constitutional ly, the
democratically elected government in Ankara and the
intelligence and security services that we have relied on
heavily for partnership to help to safeguard the border
and to work on the counterterrorism front, I think there
is going to be some dilution of that effort as they look
internally on what the threats might be to their political
system.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay. We have only five
minutes left, so why don't I just stack up some questions
and we can have a lightning round, if that's all right.
This gentleman here in the red and then the young lady
with the necklace and then the young lady in the hat.
Okay, so we need a microphone here.
SPEAKER: Thank you Director Brennan for your
time. I'd like to come back to crypto issue among other
things, I teach cryptography. If I could take strong
unbreakable crypto out of the hands of pedophiles and
criminals and terrorists, I would do so, but unfortunately
I can't. The mathematics of strong unbreakable crypto is
available to everyone. I am not talking about the Apple
hack, I am talking about strong crypto. As far as I and
other security analysts can tell, all that you could do in
order to obtain the kind of warrant based access to
illegal activities that you would like would be to ban
strong crypto and enforce some others system, but of
course there's no reason why terrorists and pedophiles
would ever comply.
So, my question to you is are there any voices
32
within your agency or within the intelligence community
who are encouraging law enforcement intelligence
professionals to simply accept the reality of strong
unbreakable crypto and to react to that as best we can
given the fundamental mathematical nature of a strong
crypto?
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Okay. So, do you have to
accept strong crypto? Young lady, yes.
SPEAKER: Hello, I am Marva Stanelun (phonetic)
here with Foreign Policy Magazine. And so you alluded to
the fact that the nature of cyber attacks from China has
changed and I wonder if you could expand on that.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: And then finally if we can
get a mic to woman in the hat. Thank you. Perfect.
MS. BROOKS: Hello, thank you. Karen Brooks,
Council on Foreign Relations. The chairman of the NEC
earlier today in foreshadowing the upcoming global trends
cited China as one of two major question marks in terms of
global uncertainty in the next five years. He further
observed that as GDP growth at home is weakening, the
Chinese leadership is more likely to look for
nationalistic causes to rally the people behind the
government and specifically cited the South China Sea in
that context. In light of that and in light of the
sweeping rebuke by the permanent court of arbitration
against China's historical claims to most of the South
China Sea, I wonder what you anticipate vis-a-vis Chinese
behavior in the coming months and whether there is an
increased risk of conflicts with the United States?
MR. BRENNAN: Okay. On the crypto issue, I am
not a scientist and engineer, I am a liberal arts guy. I
am a want to be engineer, I really am, I am amazed and
fascinated of all the things that science can give us and
engineering provides and the tremendous innovation and
creativity within this country particularly. And so, I
would just say to you, work harder, work harder in terms
of working with the government to find a way that w e can
protect this cryptography that is so necessary to our
security while at the same time not allowing those
33
terrorists, those criminals, those pedophiles to be able
to exploit it to the harm of our society. And I don't
know what the solution is, but what we need to do is
optimize our security and minimize the opportunity for
these individuals to take advantage of the tremendous
evolution and revolution that we have experienced in the
technology realm. So, let's try harder.
On the issue of cyber attacks -MS. TEMPLE-RASTON:
In China.
MR. BRENNAN: In China, I don't think I said
that they changed us, they may have changed from the
standpoint of I think they were pretty obvious in many
respects in terms of what they were doing, which is the
reason why I think they were called a lot. I do believe
that we have seen less incidence of these types of
attacks, but I don't know whether or not it is a result of
their realizing that it's tarnishing their national brand
and it is hurting them commercially, politically and
economically or whether or not they are just getting
better in terms of being able to hide their fingerprints
on this. So I think the jury is still out on it.
And on the issue of China looking forward, you point out
rightly that domestic consumption in China I believe is
only between 35% to 40% of its GDP. It's economic engine
has been fueled, which -- that percentage is way lower
than any other sort of part of the developed world. And
so, the engine for China's economic growth has been in the
foreign field and it's going to continue to need to be as
they are still dealing with a number of challenges as Greg
Treverton I guess said today.
They have long been very adventurous as far as
Chinese commercial and business interest in different
parts of the world, whether you are talking about Asia,
the Middle East or Africa. I think you're going to see
that they are also concerned about some of the instability
and terrorism that is taking place because it is affecting
their business interests. And so I think you may see more
of a security dimension, even more of a potential military
dimension to some of this Chinese expansion as a way to
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protect their interests and to strengthen some of the ir
relationships with these countries that they have invested
in over the years.
In the past, I think their relationship with a
lot of these countries were purely economic and
commercial. I think what we are going to see is more
interest in the part of China to bring a military
dimension to it and sometimes it could be through
intimidation, the South China Sea as an example, or it
could be by providing the type of attractive benefits that
go along with that type of Chinese investment.
MS. TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, thank you very much
for being with us. Please thank you, Director, for being
with us.
(Applause)
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